Steel - a Classic Material with a Large Potential for the Future

Steel is a traditional material which has been used by mankind for more than five thousand years. We may therefore be tempted to believe that we know practically everything about steel and its forms and variants which offer an extraordinary and broad range of properties. It is this diversity of properties which makes steel such a popular and widely used material. And yet, in recent years new opportunities have emerged for processing steel by unconventional techniques and producing novel, as yet unknown or unusual microstructures. This paper describes several examples of how microstructure evolution can be modified and how new and unconventional processing routes can be developed. These examples present several results of projects carried out in recent years by FORTECH Research Centre of Forming Technology and the University of West Bohemia in collaboration with their research partners. (paper)